


Coffee, Crime, and Calculus

by Ari27



Category: The Villain's Intern
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Gift Fic, Gift Fic for thewrittenpost on tumblr, Heroes & Heroines, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired By Tumblr, Superheroes, Superpowers, Supervillains, The Villain's Intern - Freeform, Tumblr, Tumblr: ari27iswriting, Tumblr: thewrittenpost, Villains, thewrittenpost
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 03:08:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17174702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ari27/pseuds/Ari27
Summary: Snippets of Aria Bronte Williams' life.





	Coffee, Crime, and Calculus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewrittenpost](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=thewrittenpost).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She had wished too loudly and life overheard."

A young girl sat cross-legged on the sand dune, her skirt tucked beneath her and her sleeves rolled up to her forearms. Her hair was the colour of gold in the glare of the sun dipping into the ocean and her gaze looked like they could cleave diamonds clean in half. But right now, those pale blue eyes had better things to do than slicing jewels open; they were busy flitting over the masterpiece she was carving into grit and grime.

 

She twirled a jagged twig between deft fingers thoughtfully, squinting at the doodles etched into the sand, before adding the finishing touches in confident strokes and deep, bold lines. _Perfect,_ she thought, flinging her make-shift stylus into the air victoriously as one would throw confetti. Abandoning all previous attempts of cleanliness, she flopped onto the sand, relishing in the feeling of fine grains sliding down the back of her shirt and weaving themselves into her hair like daisies.

 

“Aria? Aria, where are you?”

 

She froze mid-way through her sand angel at the call. A shudder worked its way down her back at the soft vibrations resounding from where her ear was pressed against the ground. Vibrations she knew to be rapidly approaching footsteps.

 

“Aria,” the voice sang, though it sounded a little tight. “Where are you hiding?”

 

The voice was like a streak of neon yellow highlighter against white paper. It was loud, glaring, and impossible to ignore. It was the kind of voice that jumped out at you, sliding between the crevices of your headphones, piercing the air and stopping people in their tracks like a whistle would. And worst of all, it was low and dark with controlled, but unmistakable, anger.

 

Aria scrambled off of the sand with great difficulty, the grains shifting and sinking under her feet like her panic set off a patch of quicksand. Hastily, she scraped her foot back and forth over the drawing she’d been poring over for an hour, smearing it into the unremarkable strip of sand it was before.

 

“Aria!”

 

The footfalls were drawing ever closer, along with an insistent rustle of leaves being pushed aside. Aria didn’t bother to brush the sand clinging to her blouse and skirt and instead made a run for it. She sprinted as fast as her fawn-like legs could go, which wasn’t much, but you’d be surprised what a dose of adrenaline can do to a person.

 

Another extremely near call of her name poured enough fear into her bloodstream for her to throw herself through a wall of shrubbery, branches and twigs leaving nicks and shallow cuts on her skin. Not wasting even one precious second to fix her clothes or groan at the stinging gashes, she pushed herself off the ground and scaled up the nearest tree.

 

She made it, barely. A year of this never-ending game of hide-and-seek was enough to get her used to the rough, sandpaper-like bark, the dirt that got under her fingernails when she dug her hands into the trunk, and her own, burning muscles as she hoisted herself onto branches.

 

Swinging one leg over the branch she was perched upon, she hugged the tree trunk tightly – one would think she was drawing comfort from it, rather than hiding behind it; they wouldn’t be wrong – and waited for her pursuer, pulling not a single breath into her lungs for fear of being heard.

 

Her father strode into the clearing, the soil underneath his feet readjusting and rearranging so that every step he took landed on flat, solid ground. Rocks sunk back into the dirt, twigs were nudged to the side by rising land, dried, crumpled leaves were flattened out. It was like Mother Nature herself was rolling out a red carpet especially for him.

 

His head snapped upwards and Aria went still under the weight of two, milky white eyes.

 

 _Idiot,_ she chided herself, forcing her body to relax, even with the pale gaze trained on her. _He can’t see you anyway. Stop being silly._

Even with that reassurance, she couldn’t help but feel like a clock wound up too tight, the spring ready to break under the pressure. His unseeing stare slowly slid over her and swept over the other trees; it was only then that she let the tension seep out of her shoulders.

 

A frown crossed his face. Aria twitched when he hooked a finger in his shoe and tugged it off, doing the same with the other one.

 

Her father placed one foot in front of the other and began dragging it along the earth, making a circular pattern. A ripple effect ran through the ground, silt and loam undulating and fluttering under his soles. His other foot scraped suddenly to the side, creating a deep imprint as it sunk into mud. The ground pulsed yet again, a wave of land hitting her tree. Aria could see her father’s lips twitch into a pleased smile.

 

Slowly, and with the sickest grin twisting his features, he treaded closer to her tree and stepped softly onto a gnarled root. Aria could sense the exact moment his skin brushed against the bark. The tree itself seemed to sing in response to her father’s power, leaves curling as one would curl their toes, branches twisting and stretching and wringing.

 

A branch that was hovering by her leg slyly reached out and curled around her ankle like a python. Aria reacted to this in the worst way possible; she screamed.

 

This only spurred the serpentine branch on. It spiralled around her lower leg, coiling tighter and tighter like a snake suffocating its prey. The sprig left burning stripes where it touched her legs, akin to a rope burn. She could feel a numbness beginning to spread from her toes all the way up to her thigh, her blood flow being severed at the calf. The pointed tip of the branch curled over her knee gently, almost possessively.

 

All of a sudden, the branch jerked sharply downwards, tearing her away from the tree trunk. The strangled scream that burst from her lips was lost to the wind as she was wrenched through the air.

 

Pain exploded in her shoulder as she crashed onto firmly-packed soil, ridden with jagged stones and spiky twigs. She moaned lowly, one hand crossing over her chest weakly to grab her shoulder in a white-knuckled grip. As she sat up sluggishly, shards of crushed rocks falling from her back as she did so, she could feel something shift around inside of her, scraping against each other and digging into the inside of her flesh.

 

White, cloudy eyes blinked down at her, their crow’s feet crinkling.

 

Aria startled, jarring her shoulder as she tried to lean away – which, first of all, _ow._ Her leg instinctively rose so she could thrust her heeled foot into his stomach, but a patch of earth twisted upwards like a waterspout to intercept her kick.

 

“Ah, ah, ah,” he warned, wagging a finger at her as if she was a disobedient puppy. “Respect your elders, girl,” he said, condescension dripping off his tone like wax off a candle. Aria recoiled as if a drop of the burning substance had touched her skin and scalded her.

 

“I’ll respect you when you do the same to me,” she bit out, words carved out in steel and left to frost over. Though her pupils were shaking uncontrollably, they shone in clear defiance.

 

Her father’s smile dropped, and you could nearly feel the temperature fall with it. Fine cracks ran along the waterspout of clay and mud. Slowly, it crumbled into pieces, disintegrating like cheap tissue paper in a pond, until Aria’s leg was free again.

 

She rubbed circles into the abused skin of her calf, smeared with mud and thin streaks of blood from the raw, tender lines looped around her leg. She didn’t bother trying to attack him again. No point in aggravating her wounds any further.

 

The man leaning over her certainly had other ideas. One hand lashed out to grasp the front of her blouse and hoist her to her feet roughly, no thought or care given to her injuries. Aria let out pained gasp, white-hot agony searing black splotches into her vision.

 

“Remember, my dearest,” he chuckled lowly, his canines showing, ready to rip her throat open.

 

The ground beneath her split open, leaving her father’s grip the only thing keeping her from plummeting into its gaping maw. Aria shrieked in terror, her legs kicking air to avoid the mouth below her, ready to swallow her up. Her breath quickened in an effort to hoard as much air as possible in her lungs before she was left to suffocate.

 

“You’re on my territory,” he whispered, smiling softly, before letting go.

 

The earth devoured her.

 

* * *

 

 

“You know I hate doing that to you,” he said matter-of-factly, frowning down at her like she was the one at fault as he wiped the mud and tears staining her flushed cheeks. “Don’t you _ever_ hide from me again,” he murmured, concern dropping into dark malice briefly, before it rose into his usual light-hearted, lilting tone, “unless you want to go back underground. Do you want to go back underground?”

 

Aria looked blankly at her sullied hands, wet and sticky with tears, blood, and mud. Her blonde hair was caked with sludge and muck, dyeing it an ugly, murky brown. Her pretty pink skirt that she spent half of her savings on was ruined, the original colour barely visible through the filth. The bitter taste of dirt weighed heavily on her tongue from when she made the mistake of trying to breathe and choked on soil instead.

 

Quietly, she rasped out, “No.”

 

The man smiled crookedly, delighted at having broken her in. “Good.”

 

* * *

 

 

Aria lounged on the sofa, her limbs splayed out over the cushions, one hand lazily clicking away at a remote. Channels flew by, spending about two seconds on the screen before she switched to the next channel.

 

 _“-add a spoonful of-”_ Click.

_“-I can’t believe you cheated on-”_ Click.

_“-Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do-”_ Click.

_“-Krusty Kray-ya-yab Pizza, is the pizza yeahh, for you and-”_ Click.

 

 _“-Terra has just arrived on a scene-”_ Cli- Wait.

 

Aria scrambled off the couch, a look of alarm on her face. Contracted pupils glued to the screen, she slammed her finger on the Back button, the channel switching to the News channel half a beat later.

 

Her father appeared on screen, clad in shades of green and brown, the dirt beneath him rippling like water. He was wearing a yukata – a nod to his Japanese lineage – dyed in natural colours to match the Earth aesthetic. Quite modest in comparison to the other heroes and their bright, flashy, flamboyance-over-functionality costumes.

 

But that wasn’t what interested Aria. Naturally, her eyes drew to his shoes. It was discreet – you wouldn’t even notice it if you didn’t know what to look for – but Aria picked up on it even with the shaky, crappy footage. The soles of his shoes were non-existent.

 

It was an easy mistake to make, considering his skin colour couldn’t be seen under all the dirt it was slathered in. Besides, no villain would pay any attention to his feet what with all the loud, showy hand gestures he was doing.

 

Terra – because there was a stark difference between the earth-themed superhero and the monster she lived with – sent a twisting spire of rock in the direction of the hydrokinetic villain he was facing off. As he did so, he made some complicated, circular motion with his hands, like he was physically crumpling and wringing the stone, moulding it into a weapon. His gesticulation elicited some ‘ooh’s and ‘ah’s from the crowd, luring the attention away from the subtle rotations of his ankles.

 

The spire pierced through the wall of water his rival erected and missed the villain herself by a hairsbreadth.

 

Aria could see a flicker of exhaustion in Terra’s eyes. He was getting bored. _Time to end this,_ his face seemed to say. With a quick flick of his leg, the spire fell away and a hole opened up under the villain.

 

Aria’s stomach dropped, unwanted memories encroaching on her mind like scuttling spiders, sinking their fangs in her brain and flooding her head with poison. Bile rose, a wave of burning sourness hitting her tongue. She pursed her lips and swallowed it back down, searing her throat in the process.

 

The water-based villain fell, fell into the suffocation and the darkness and the crushing pressure that she was so familiar with. Her feet first, then her knees, then hip and stomach and shoulders and-

 

She stopped there. The gaps filled themselves in, but her head was still free. She could still breathe and see the sunlight and- what?

 

“As expected of our resident saint. Merciful, even to the villains,” a reporter praised as she ducked under the yellow tape and jogged up to Terra.

 

“Well, I can’t exactly bury them alive, can I? That's way too harsh!” Terra chuckled, donning kindness and compassion like a well-loved coat. “They’re still human, after all. And no human deserves that kind of torture."

 

So.

 

She wasn’t human to him anymore, was she?

 

“Any message you’d like to give for the villains watching?” the reporter asked, smiling at the man with awe in her eyes, like she couldn’t believe someone so sympathetic and caring existed. Aria felt repulsed.

 

He looked at Aria dead in the eye through the television screen and smiled that horribly fake smile of his.

 

“Remember, as long as you’re on earth, you’re on my territory.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Ariaaa.”

 

Aria’s shoulders shook, her palms catching her sob before she could give herself away. Tears ran freely down her face as the sound of rocks scarping against each other and the tiny tremors running through the ground.

 

She crouched behind a bush and tried to even her breathing. She needed to breathe properly. She needed to get as much oxygen as possible before he took it away again.

 

_“Aria.”_

 

God, why couldn’t he just leave her _alone?_

 

“I’m getting angry,” he laughed, though it was discordant and grating on the ears.

 

What did she do to deserve this? She wanted Mom back. She wanted to go live with her in America. She wanted to see that blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman that cropped up in her dreams from time to time. She wanted to lie in her lap with her feet off the ground so her father couldn’t sense her. She wanted to be whisked away and hidden from the monster she shared her blood with. She wanted to fly, fly far away and live on the clouds so that her father couldn’t use his powers to hunt her down.

 

“Did you forget? As long as you’re on earth-”

 

 _I’m on your territory,_ she recited dully, a sigh falling from her lips.

 

She hunched over more, ducking lower for all it was worth. Under her breath, she wished. All of her wants and dreams and desires, she wished and she wished and she wished.

 

“I can feel you.”

 

Her mutterings didn’t stop.

 

“You’re right behind the bushes, I can tell.”

 

She wished.

 

“It’s useless. Why hide?”

 

She wished…

 

Aria didn’t realise it at first. She didn’t notice that the earth’s quivering had stopped. She didn’t realise that the pressure on her knees was gone. She didn’t notice until the wind caressed her closed eyes and urged them open.

 

Her eyes met blue.

 

She had wished too loudly and Life overheard.

 

An alien feeling slid into place as she remained transfixed on the hues of heaven; a feeling of tranquility and clarity, for in that expanse of sweet, calm air was a sense of freedom. The band that had been pressing down on her chest loosened, and oxygen rushed in to fill the empty spaces inside her lungs.

 

She did a somersault, ricocheting into the air even though her feet had kicked off on _nothing._ She spun and flipped and pirouetted, gliding and parting through clouds as easily as water, like she’d been doing it her whole life.

 

Power hummed at the tips of her fingers, buzzing and fizzing under her nails and cuticles and pads. Experimentally, she made a sharp, downwards motion like she was chopping wood and nearly bit her tongue off when she was sent hurtling to the ground. Instinctively, she pressed her palms together and froze in mid-air, her face inches from the ground.

 

“That…was _so cool,”_ she said breathlessly, face glowing and flushed with child-like wonder. She planted her hands on the ground, provoking an “Ah-hah!” from her father. Before his ankle could even twitch, she bent her elbows and pushed down, propelling herself back into the air and out of her father’s reach.

 

“What…? Where did she-?” he trailed off, raking his foot through the soil in search of her signature. Her father’s voice was utterly bewildered, though a tinge of anger was bleeding through. He scuffed his heel against the ground repeatedly, frustration rolling off of him in spades when nothing happened.

 

Finally, giving up on his pursuit, he stomped his foot on the ground with a huff, seething and practically foaming at the mouth. Seemingly forgetting that his powers were influenced by his footwork, he was catapulted into the air by the sudden lurch of the dirt beneath him, putting him eye-level with a smirking Aria. He looked comical, his pupil-less eyes the size of saucers and his mouth open in a silent scream.

 

Aria clamped her hands over her mouth to trap the bubbling laughter threatening to overbrim. Goodness, developing her powers right in the nick of time was nothing short of a miracle. She supposed it was Life’s way of making it up to her for making her first seven years hell.

 

An absolutely diabolical grin crossed her face. She wondered…

 

If she could change her own gravitational field, then what about others?

 

She faced her palms to the dazed man staggering around on his mound of dirt. Energy pooled into digits and she imagined invisible ribbons budding from the pads of her fingers, severing breezes in half as they flew towards her father. They looped around his stomach, then legs, then neck, until she had him fully in her grasp.

 

Eyes not holding an ounce of remorse, she curled her fingers into a fist and thrust it upwards.

 

The ribbons constricted around him like serpents and wrenched him away from his earth, his precious domain.

 

He squawked in alarm and kicked his feet wildly, searching for something nature-made the receptors of his soles could connect to. _What a shame his power is touch-activated,_ she mock-mourned, smile down-right ruthless. _Cripple his legs badly enough and he’ll be useless,_ mused Aria, like it was a passing observation rather than a threat.

 

Briefly, she questioned the morality of her fantasy.

 

“Aria, I will bury you alive again and this time, I’m not letting you back out,” he growled, blindly throwing punches in hopes of clipping her.

 

Well.

 

Never fucking mind.

 

Threats and abuse and dark, dark ideas clustered behind her teeth, ready to be spat out. Though the words scratched her gums and burned like hellfire, she forced it back down her windpipe and grimaced, like she had swallowed something prickly. It was then that the dryness of her throat made itself known. But she knew that the thirst stuck in her throat, itching like crazy, wasn’t yearning for water. It was craving to devour something much fouler.

 

Terror trickled into his expression as it became apparent she wasn’t letting him back down to where he was strongest; something within her purred in delight.

 

She floated closer to her father and rested a hand against his chest to let him know she was there. It was a gesture of affection on the surface, but if you looked into her eyes and saw the hate and the delight and the hunger…you’d know it was anything but.

 

Her father went still under her touch. Though he couldn’t see her, the taste of her contempt was heavy on his tongue and he’d have to be an idiot not to recognise the flavour. After all, it was him who altered her palate so drastically.

 

Aria let her power permeate his chest as discreetly as she could, speaking quietly to him to distract him from the fact that she was slowly choking him by intensifying the gravity pressing down on his chest. She wasn’t going to kill him, of course. That would be far too humane. No, she was just going to give him a taste of what he dished out.

 

“The earth may be your territory, Father,” she said softly, though hate curdled beneath her gentle tone like turbulent waters beneath a calm surface.

 

Her father’s lips were turning a fascinating shade of blue as she continued to play with gravity. He opened his mouth but all that came out were strangled, retching noises. Aria let the mirth she’d been keeping plastered on the roof of her mouth spill forth in quick, breathless bursts. Ah, how sweet it is, the taste of irony.

 

Aria clasped the front of his shirt made an abrupt, upwards motion with her free hand, sending them soaring.

 

They shot through clouds, rode the wind currents, and narrowly avoided a flock of migrating birds. Her eyes shone with manic glee, pupils contracting as they focused on the sun. The sun…it was so close. Aria wanted to pluck it right out of its blue canvas and keep it in her pocket.

 

She released her grip on the man, sending him plummeting to the ground, where even his earth manipulation won’t be able to save him. He shrieked and flailed his long, ungainly limbs like a first-time skydiver – oh, _wait._

 

Rolling her eyes, she pointed her index finger at the man and flicked it upwards, easily lifting him to the same level again.

 

“As I was saying, Father,” she murmured to the shaken up, faintly hysterical hero. “The earth is your territory, but the air is _mine._ And you-” she pointed at him, wagging her finger slightly in admonishment. A wicked, triumphant, undeniably pleased grin played on her lips. “-are trespassing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terra, being lifted into the sky:  
> "We're SOAAAAARING, FLYYYYYYYIN'-"
> 
> That was my take on Aria getting her powers, though it's 100% sure not to be true. She was probs born with it idk

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfic was inspired by thewrittenpost's WIP on tumblr: The Villain's Intern. Give her some love!
> 
> Her tumblr: thewrittenpost  
> https://thewrittenpost.tumblr.com/
> 
> My tumblr: ari27iswriting  
> https://ari27iswriting.tumblr.com/
> 
> I just post and reblog memes most of the time so eh. If you're looking for good writing, better go to thewrittenpost instead ;)


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